Helpful words
Hey, you! Homage edition
- About: Naming
First installment of the A Hundred Monkey’s guide to virtual assistant naming AI is real. It’s happening. It also has a name, a voice, and a personality like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana. As professional namers we’ve named virtual assistants and have thought a lot about the ins and outs of naming a digital being. In…
How to select a URL without going insane
Satisficing versus maximizing “So what about the .com?” is one of the more common questions we get asked when discussing a project. Often times, what’s baked inside that question is the desire to have theirname.com at the end of the naming process. Floating in the collective aether is this idea that when you’re starting something…
If you cross a creative over the holidays…
- About: Naming
Being a professional namer of companies and products affects how people interact with you at social gatherings and holiday parties. New acquaintances might question “how it all works” or ask if I “went to school for that,” and tend to be enthusiastic to know more—especially if they have a new project or side hustle in…
Renaming, like naming but harder
- About: Naming
At A Hundred Monkeys we do our fair share of renaming projects. This year, 42% of our naming projects have been finding new names for products or companies that already have publicized names. Not only is renaming somewhat common, it happens for different reasons. Some companies are legally forced to change their names while others…
Snacks on snacks on snacks: Snack naming at the Island Pacific Supermarket
This weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Island Pacific Supermarket in Vallejo, California. For the uninitiated, the Island Pacific Supermarket in Vallejo is a supermarket featuring foods from the Philippines. I entered the store looking for snacks as I had spent most of the day performing manual labor and was wanting to snack…
Problem namers
- About: Naming
A case for brand names that wallow with us. As consumers, we’re inundated with positive messages for products meant to make our lives better. This tastes good. This makes you more appealing to others. This makes your kids happy. This makes you happy because it’s cheaper than the other thing. Alongside this positivity comes a…
Laissez-Faire Attitudes Yield Shitty Soufflés
- About: Naming
Thoughts on Client Enthusiasm I lead about 25 naming projects every year and I’ve noticed a common characteristic that is a solid indicator for how fruitful a specific creative relationship will be: passion. To put it simply, do you care about what you’re doing and do you get others excited about it? Further, for naming…
What to do with all this noise
- About: Naming
We live in a noisy world, and it’s not just noisy for our ears, it’s noisy for our eyes and our minds too. Modern communication has allowed us near-unlimited access to all our loved ones and acquaintances. It’s also made for a vast sea of content and managing all of this noise can be taxing…
Build it and they will come
- About: Naming, Naming Architecture
What we’ve learned from building naming architectures At A Hundred Monkeys we have a singular focus for most of our naming projects. We’re naming one company or one product. A smaller subset of our work is focused on naming multiple products that make up a brand’s portfolio. We call this work naming architecture. My colleague…
The state of writing at A Hundred Monkeys
- About: Writing
At the end of every year at A Hundred Monkeys our leadership team gets together in Mill Valley, down the street from the old auto repair shop where we first started working together. We reflect on the work we’ve done over the past year and talk about the work we want to do next…